High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM)

REINVENTING MEMORY TECHNOLOGY

HBM blasts through existing performance limitations

TIME

GDDR5's rising power consumption may soon be

great enough to actively stall the growth of
graphics performance.

PERFORMANCE

GDDR5 cant keep up with GPU performance growth

TOTAL POWER

INDUSTRY PROBLEM #1
nd

Tre

x
1.4

Coming
Soon!
Memory Power

PC Power

GPU Performance

*AMD internal estimates, for illustrative purposes only

110mm

INDUSTRY PROBLEM #2
A large number of GDDR5 chips are required to
reach high bandwidth. Larger voltage circuitry is
also required. This determines the size of a
high-performance product.

90mm

GDDR5 limits form factors

INDUSTRY PROBLEM #3

DRAM

On-chip integration not ideal for everything

Technologies like NAND, DRAM and Optics would
benefit from on-chip integration, but aren't
technologically compatible.

SSD
TRUE
IVR
OPTICS

MOORES INSIGHT
Over the history of computing hardware, the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit
has doubled approximately every two years.
(Thus) it may prove to be more economical to build large systems out of larger functions, which
are separately packaged and interconnected to design and construct a considerable variety of
equipment both rapidly and economically.
Source: "Cramming more components onto integrated circuits," Gordon E. Moore, Fairchild Semiconductor, 1965

Revolutionary HBM breaks the processing bottleneck

HBM is a new type of memory chip with low power consumption and ultra-wide
communication lanes. It uses vertically stacked memory chips interconnected by microscopic
wires called "through-silicon vias," or TSVs.
TSV
Microbump

HBM DRAM Die

HBM DRAM Die
HBM DRAM Die
HBM DRAM Die

PHY

Logic Die

PHY

GPU/CPU/Soc Die

Interposer
Package Substrate

HBM vs GDDR5:

HBM shortens your information commute

Off Chip Memory

Stacked Memory
Logic Die

Silicon Die

CPU/GPU
Package
Substrate

Interposer

GDDR5

HBM

HBM vs GDDR5:

Compare side by side

TSV

DRAM Core die

Package

DRAM Core die

DRAM

DRAM Core die

Substrate

DRAM Core die

Base die

IFBGA Roll
Iu-Bump

GDDR5
32-bit
Up to 1750MHz (7GBps)
Up to 28GB/s per chip
1.5V

Per Package
Bus Width
Clock Speed
Bandwidth
Voltage

HBM vs GDDR5:

Better bandwidth per watt

HBM
1024-bit
Up to 500MHz (1GBps)
>100GB/s per stack
1.3V

10.66

GDDR5

35+

HBM
0

10

20

30

40

50

GB/s of Bandwidth Per Watt

HBM vs GDDR5:

Massive space savings

28mm

5mm

24mm

7mm

1GB HBM
94% less surface area2

Areal, to scale

1GB GDDR5

HBM: AMD and JEDEC establish a new industry standard

Design and implementation

AMD

Industry standards

JEDEC

ICs/PHY

SK hynix

AMDs history of pioneering innovations and open technologies sets

industry standards and enables the entire industry to push the
boundaries of what is possible.
Mantle
GDDR
Wake-on-LAN/Magic Packet
DisplayPortTM Adaptive-Sync

x86-64
Integrated Memory Controllers
On-die GPUs
Consumer Multicore CPUs

2015 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved. AMD, the AMD Arrow logo,and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
1. Testing conducted by AMD engineering on the AMD Radeon R9 290X GPU vs. an HBM-based device. Data obtained through isolated direct measurement
of GDDR5 and HBM power delivery rails at full memory utilization. Power efficiency calculated as GB/s of bandwidth delivered per watt of power consumed.
AMD Radeon R9 290X (10.66 GB/s bandwidth per watt) and HBM-based device (35+ GB/s bandwidth per watt), AMD FX-8350, Gigabyte GA-990FX-UD5, 8GB
DDR3-1866, Windows 8.1 x64 Professional, AMD Catalyst 15.20 Beta. HBM-1
2. Measurements conducted by AMD Engineering on 1GB GDDR5 (4x256MB ICs) @ 672mm2 vs. 1zGB HBM (1x4-Hi) @ 35mm2. HBM-2